Links are interested in Southeast Asian literature

Poskod.MY are running a writing programme focusing on Kuala Lumpur’s untold stories: UnRepresented. They are looking for “writers who would like to spend ten weeks exploring themes of ‘being unrepresented’ and unrepresented narratives in and around KL“. The programme will consist of workshops and talks in eight weekend sessions held in March-May 2014. It sounds super interesting — if you are in the right country and up for it, you should totally apply! Deadline 19 February.

THE SEA IS OURS is a Southeast Asian steampunk anthology seeking short story submissions.

How does the steampunk aesthetic look, feel, sound, smell, or taste like in these regions? What kind of technologies would grow in resource-rich SEAsia? What do our historical figures, our Parameswaras, Trung sisters, Lapu-Lapus, do in such a world?

Hopefully this will provide the opportunity to new and not so new authors to get their work into print. I hope to collect around 80 poems by as many authors as possible by the end of March and the book published by the end of June. I will be happy to welcome poems from you or from others you know. Kindly pass the word around.

If you have a play that deals with ethnic minority experiences in Singapore and need some help with it, please send it to me. I’m offering free one-on-one consultation for it. In English or Malay. PM me please! :)

Events

There is going to be a literary festival in Alor Setar in March! Find out more at the website: Alor Setar Literary Festival. They have missed their golden chance to hip-ify the name and call it “A.Star” or something like that, but otherwise it looks pretty cool!

(I am linking in part because (guilty confession) Alor Setar has always been in my mind a symbol for the boring one-horse town. I have never even really seen the town so it is a totally unfair, baseless judgment. I trace it to something my dad once said when we were visiting Edinburgh. Now, I like Edinburgh — a storied, beautiful city, bracingly hard on the calves — but my dad stood in the middle of Princes Street, looked up and down, and said, in the most unimpressed way anyone ever said anything: “One main street only. Like Alor Setar like that!”)

And an article

I found Mohammad A. Quayum’s article on English-language literature in Malaysia and Singapore interesting. He posits that Malaysian writing in English is thin on the ground and of variable quality because of politics around the national language and what counts as “national literature”. I really don’t know enough about the subject to comment, but will look forward to the continuation!

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